(gentle music) - Hey, y'all. It's Ayo here. Let's talk about differentiation. We toss the idea of differentiation around a lot as teachers.
We wanna do it, we want it to be meaningful, and we want our students to benefit from us going through the process, not lose ground, because we're differentiating. Equally as important, the process of differentiation can't be overly complicated to the point where it's too hard for us to do for all of our students in our class who we each have their own level of needs based on that extent of their disability. It needs to be relatively easy. It needs to be effective.
It needs to be meaningful. And most of all, differentiation needs to be fast. Did I mention that? It needs to be fast.
Okay, so let's look at the process of differentiation fast and in action. Our middle school math class is working on area and perimeter, and we were able to get the scope and sequence from the general ed teacher and even score their worksheet that they just worked on yesterday. So, to align with this activity, we're differentiating to meet the needs of our students by calculating the perimeter of different shapes within our small groups. Ultimately though, as we look through the prerequisite skills, we're gonna be addressing several underlying targets that will help support access to this grade level material.
So, we're gonna take this activity, and we're not going to differentiate it in 85,000 different ways. We're gonna use some essential tools to make the process of differentiating easier. We're gonna start with some number lines. I've got 1 to 20 and 1 to 10.
We're gonna add some manipulatives, and I'm choosing some building bricks, because they are highly engaging for several of my students. And this alone is a huge motivator. I'm also gonna add in some geometric shapes, and with that, we're ready to differentiate. Now the only other thing that I need are some number cards, and wouldn't you know it, these are gonna do just the trick.
They make a great set of number cards. Now, I'm setting up a couple of different learning setups here to meet the diverse needs of all of our students. I might have a student who is working on identifying numbers as we work on perimeter. In order to access the worksheets and the curriculum at their enrolled grade level, I'm gonna use these number cards, and I'm going to make the perimeter.
I might even tell the student, I'm gonna put the cards on the perimeter of this shape. I could ask them what the shape was or to differentiate between those shapes. And then because they're working on number recognition, I might ask them to identify the numbers that go around as we work on perimeter. For another student, I might have them work on adding these up, but in order to make that happen, I might need them to use manipulatives.
To identify each of these numbers as we go around for the perimeter and then pull them all together, and add the items using their number line. So we're doing a couple of different steps here, but we're going through the process of identifying one-to-one correspondence and adding numbers together to determine what our perimeter is. And throughout the activity, we're gonna use grade level appropriate language to define the task that we're actually accomplishing. For some of our other students, this might be too easy.
We might need to work on different types of shapes in order to target the perimeter skill. And in addition, we might need to target some slightly bigger numbers, so that we can make this a little bit more engaging. By increasing those numbers, adding in some two digits, we can target not only individual goals and objectives, but also the prerequisite skills that support the student accessing the grade level material. And we were able to do this with just a few handy tools, like a number line, number cards, geometric shapes, and manipulatives.
By using those resources, our students and all of our students can access this grade level activity in a meaningful way. That's how we differentiate. We take additional supports to help our students access the grade level material in a meaningful way. I hope you can see from all of these examples that differentiation can be easy when you know which prerequisite skills you're using to access the grade level target, as well as what's most meaningful for your students.
Good luck as you start to differentiate. I'm Ayo Jones reminding you to stay strong and teach on. (gentle music)
